Penetration Testing Cost Calculator
What Does a Penetration Test Actually Cost?
A traditional pentest is quoted as one testing fee, but the real cost includes procurement, legal, project management, and retesting. Set your scope below to compare the true annual cost of manual engagements against continuous AI pentesting.
Your testing needs
Teams shipping weekly effectively need continuous testing. Manual engagements rarely run more than 1–4 times per year on budget.
Traditional manual testing / year
$124,000 – $268,000
Estimate for 1 app(s) across 4 test cycles per year, including ~1.8× overhead and one retest each.
Penetrify (Starter) / year
$1,200
1 scans/month, retests included, continuous coverage on every deploy.
Estimated annual saving
$122,800 – $266,800
Roughly 103× cheaper at the low end, with far more frequent testing.
Estimates only. Traditional figures use midpoint market rates plus a 1.8× overhead multiplier (procurement, legal, project management) and one retest cycle per engagement; actual quotes vary by tester seniority, geography, and scope. See our full penetration testing cost breakdown for sourcing.
What Drives Penetration Testing Cost
The quoted testing fee is rarely the whole bill. These four factors explain most of the gap between what you are quoted and what you actually spend.
Scope & complexity
A single-purpose MVP and a multi-tenant SaaS with intricate permissions are worlds apart. More endpoints, roles, and integrations mean more tester days, and testing fees scale roughly with that time.
Hidden overhead
Procurement, NDAs and Rules of Engagement, internal project management, and remediation triage typically add 1.5–3× on top of the quoted fee. A $20,000 test often represents $40,000+ in true cost.
Testing frequency
Point-in-time engagements cover one day of the year. Matching a weekly release cadence with manual testing is economically impossible; the exposure window between tests is a real, if invisible, cost.
Retesting
Verifying that a fix actually worked usually means a separate engagement at $2,000–$8,000 per cycle. Subscription platforms include retesting, so confirming a fix costs nothing extra.